Re-entry Survived

Re-entry is a word I've been thinking a lot about lately. It conjures up images of the space shuttle and heat shields. Atmospheric dust and pressure changes conspiring to create searing temperatures and a bumpy ride back to earth.

Re-entry to Juneau hasn't been nearly as dramatic, but maybe similarly challenging. On the positive side, it's been simply wonderful to see old friends and neighbors on the street and to be genuinely welcomed home. One of Celia's friends even made a welcome home poster to hang on our door. And my co-workers had a delightful banner on my office door, complete with balloons and personal photos.

We've also seemed to catch the tail end of Juneau's Best Summer Ever. Warm days and sultry nights only to be marred by an occasional batch of wildfire smoke blown in from the Yukon. It's raining lightly now while I write, but you get the feeling that the sun will be back soon. Last week, I even got to go on the annual voyage to Sweetheart Creek with the boys. 40 boat miles south of Juneau, one can catch up to 25 sockeye salmon a day with a net. The fish were few that day (we only caught four), but just up the creek from us, we watched a sow brown bear fish for salmon for her three young cubs. At one point, all the cubs were napping with their heads on the rocks while momma bear tore fish flesh in her mouth.

On the downside has been a flummoxing employment situation. My leaving Juneau for my fellowship coincided with a vast reorganization of my employer. At the time, it seemed removing myself from the organizational structure was the right thing to do. But now, returning to the agency, I don't have a clearly identified role. For the past few months, I've been in the application process for the CEO position for the agency. Just two days ago, I received word that I didn't get the job.

So now what?

In my confusion, I decided to take a few weeks off and paint the house, like I've been meaning to do for a few years now. Scraping paint for the past four days has given me a certain amount of solace. It's incremental, but you can see the impact of your work. And it's somewhat satisfying when you pry off a big chunk of paint chips all at once. We'll see if the weather holds enough for me to get a coat or two down. But at least my role is clear and the path forward is not uncertain.

Professionally, I'm pursuing a new research project through my fellowship. There may be a possibility of working half-time from my house on a research project for 15 months or so. It would be some great experience to conduct a research project from start to finish, with the help of some expert advisors. And I could take a turn at primary caregiver, something I've been wanting to do. Celia just starts kindergarten this year. And Ferguson is more and more interactive every day. I'm hoping it works out. I'd like to be back on some steady tracks for a while. This little caboose doesn't do so well sitting in the rail yard, waiting for an engine to hook up to.

Coming Home

Dixon Entrance

We're on the M/V Taku, coming into the open waters of Dixon Entrance. Here, before Ketchikan, the Inside Passage breaches itself and lets the Gulf of Alaska push its way in. You can feel the ocean swells start to lift the bow ever so slightly.

We must be about to cross the international border, leaving British Columbia for Alaska. The land offers a familiar sight. Low clouds obscuring the horizon, to where sea and sky end and then begin. A few rocky islands with scraggles of trees somehow survive the open waters. The pale light of a setting sun breaks through the clouds somewhere and then reflects off the water.

We're coming home.

This morning in Prince Rupert a wolf bounded in front of me down a path through the woods. Was he beckoning me homeward? Or is that some silly romantic notion from my youth? The day I first left Alaska, my first summer out of college, I heard the wolves howl near my home on the Toklat River. To me, their howl was saying goodbye. But I am older now, and less given to such notions. But part of me still wants to think this rare sight of a wolf is somehow meant to reconnect me to this land.

It feels like we've been gone a while. And the journey back reminds me of just how far we've gone. We stretched out the road home a little, with a trip to Buffalo, NY en route. I had to speak at the Big Brothers Big Sisters of Canada annual convention in Toronto, and we took the opportunity to visit Jessica's family in upstate New York and across the border. When we got back to our car in Seattle, we drove up to Vancouver, BC, and spent a few days there. Then we took a short ferry over to Nanaimo on Vancouver Island and drove up the island to Port Hardy. Another BC Ferry took us to Prince Rupert yesterday and we left Rupert this evening. After another 42 hours or so aboard the Alaska Marine Highway, we'll land in Auke Bay and drive on home.

Now you can really feel the lift and fall of the bow.

The ferry offers a good time to reflect, when one isn't chasing toddlers around. I'm hoping it will also be as conducive to sleep as the last boat we were on. For the first time in I don't know how long I took not one, but two, two-hour naps yesterday on the BC Ferry. I guess that shows how much this trip home has involved sleep deprivation. Going to the east coast and back, sharing rooms with small children, and early morning flight and ferry queues have had a cumulative impact on us all.

As I look back on the last six months, it's still hard to fully process the experience. It feels like I won't really know what this experience has meant until I am able to sleep in my own bed again, get back into my old routines, and sit back in my desk at the office. I guess maybe it feels a bit foreign still, and won't become part of me until I can relate it to my everyday world a bit better.

Preparing for my talk in Canada gave me a good chance to think about what I've learned these past six months, though. My talk was about how to use external research articles in the context of youth mentoring. So as I thought about what I would say to a group of my peers on how to use research, I figured I could only tell them what I had learned. In the end, I think one of the main things I learned was how to critically read a research article. So I tried to give them a few pointers on how they could become critical readers of research themselves.

I also found myself coming back to the limitations of research. In the end, I've come to believe that as good as the research is, it doesn't give us any final answers. External research adds important information into the dialogue, but it's not the only information. I think it should be considered along with intuitive knowledge gained from practical experience, data used in daily program management, and other information. There simply isn't enough research to answer many of youth mentoring's important questions well. What findings are there give us good information to use in guiding our programs, but they also provoke a lot of other questions.

In my mind, as a youth mentoring practitioner, one of the best uses of external research is to help us think critically about how we manage youth mentoring programs. By helping us think like a researcher, reading research can inspire us to consider our programmatic questions with the critical rigor of a scientist. Reading research can also open up additional questions to us, which we then must seek to find an answer. And maybe most importantaly, research can cause us to challenge our assumptions. We may have assumed that a program was working, or that there was a reason why we did things a certain way. But when we actually see some data that confound our assumptions, it can cause us to think more critically, more rigorously, about our work.

And this, I believe, is essential. The work we do, bringing strangers into the lives of fragile youth, and trying to create nurturing relationships between them, is frought with challenges. And frankly, while we like to talk about the life-changing power of our program, our matches don't always work out. If we want more children to experience this promise of life-changing relationships, we have to think more critically of our business. Surely we need to tell ourselves and others our wonderful stories. But just as much, we need to tell ourselves the not-so-nice stories, and look under the hood of these matches to see if we can fix them. Only by asking the tough questions will be able to improve our programs so more children can benefit from a one-to-one mentoring relationship with an adult. And asking tough questions is just what research can, and should, inspire us to do.

Now even the reflection of the sun is gone. In front of our bow, the waves disappear into fog. It makes one wonder where one is heading. But that is the subject for another posting...

Bad Blogger

I've been a really bad blogger lately. Probably six weeks has gone by without a post. I've discovered that it's really easy to fall off of the blogging wagon. And once you're off, you start to wonder if you really need to jump back on it again!

Well, I've started this thing and I aim to finish it. So now with my finals winding down for the spring quarter, it seems like a good time to update this here website.

Today, I just turned in my final exam for my statistics class and am about to drop off my final research paper for my class on relationship-based interventions for children.

Here are some highlights from the last six weeks:

I brought Celia and Ferguson to an Arceneaux family reunion in Lafayette, Louisiana in early May. Flying alone with two young kids was one thing, and then Ferguson caught the croup an hour before our return flight to Portland. I was hoping to introduce the kids to the joys of boiled crawfish, but they both eschewed their 1/4 Cajun heritage on that point.

<--Two-headed Louisiana Turtle


We concluded the online survey of the youth mentoring field and the use of evidence-based decision making. I've been analyzing the data with SPSS and have found some pretty interesting stuff. I managed to craft a paper for my statistics class out of some multiple regressions I created with the data.

I went to Washington, DC, in late May to attend the Society for Prevention Research Conference. On the way there, we visited my brother-in-law near Harrisburg, PA. We had fun watching Celia and Ferguson play with their three cousins. It was a new experience to be at a conference and hardly know a soul. I was able to meet some friendly researchers who work on suicide prevention, though, and attended some interesting research presentations. Probably the highlight was having the opportunity to serve as a discussant on a panel discussing relationship quality in youth mentoring. As discussant, I was supposed to deliver some incisive commentary after the researchers presented their works and help kick off a discussion with the audience. I was pretty nervous about playing the role (usually taken my a senior researcher in the field), but I think I avoided making a total fool out of myself. It actually helped me confirm that I've learned quite a lot these past five months. I wouldn't have imagined doing that kind of thing with any degree of confidence six months ago.

Farmer's markets are in full swing around here and my current quest is to find the perfect strawberry.

I think that about catches the blog up for now. My time is winding up here in Portland. Over the next few weeks, I hope to reflect more on my experience and what I've learned and get it down in the blog.

Lucky Man

It's been a while since I posted here. I guess I am slipping a little. Maybe that's a good thing.

The last few weeks have had a lot of travel, with the trip to Anchorage and a trip to New York last week. I was in the City to meet with the other Fellows supported by the WT Grant Foundation. We met at the Foundation's offices in mid-Manhattan for two days and shared about our experiences. It was interesting to learn what the other Fellows are up to and connect with them on a personal level. There are some amazing people doing some innovative work.

I think the meeting helped me get my head on a little straighter. Since being back, I've been thinking a lot about how to make the most of my remaining days here in Portland. I've since met with my mentor, Tom, and we've got a refined plan for how my remaining time will be spent. I think it's realistic and doable and that's given me a bit of a lift. I'm hoping for a strong finish to my time here.

One of the projects I'm excited about is one that involves starting to look at our internal data from BBBS of Alaska. For one of my classes, we have to complete a research project. I'm hoping I can look at some of the Strength of Relationship reports we've been collecting from our Bigs and Littles and see how these scores relate to match success and the way we provide support to our matches. It'll be good to work with the home office more over the next few months in advance of my return home. Plus I'm excited to bring some of my new statistical knowledge to bear on the work I've been doing at the agency.

Being in New York City also made me realize how unique my Fellowship experience has been. All of the other Fellows are still working part-time at their existing jobs and part-time on a Fellowship project. None of them transplanted their entire families to have this experience. Again, I realize how incredibly lucky I am to have such a supportive partner, my wife Jessica. She's let me follow my dreams, and kept our family together to make this move possible.

Jessica turned forty today. Happy Birthday, Sweetie! You are the love of my life.

Coming Back

I'm on the plane again, heading from Anchorage back to Seattle and then on to Portland. I think we might have passed over Kuiu Island a few minutes ago. I was reminiscing just yesterday about visiting Kuiu Island with another member of the Alaska Suicide Prevention Council. I was lucky to go there with Kake leader Mike Jackson more than 10 years ago. He took me to Point Cornwallis to pick seaweed (nori) and showed me all the places on Kuiu Island that used to be inhabited by the Tlingit people. He told me there Tlingit names and how heavily settled it once was. Now Kuiu Island is uninhabited, but it is cherished land by residents of Kake. It was a weighty experience and I felt incredibly honored to be brought to this sacred place and learn a little of the subsistence lifestyle. We picked a lot, and Mike showed me how they dried the seaweed in the open air.

It's been an interesting few days meeting with the Council. Since it was my first meeting in-person, I really tried to listen and learn about the council before shooting my mouth off too much. I think that's one thing I've learned over the last few months. I need to get better at assessing a situation and the dynamics of a group before sharing my opinions. Yesterday we spent most of the day getting to know each other and learning about some of the history of the council. Today we had a facilitated session to help develop a new strategic plan for the council.

I think everyone was pleased by the end of the day with the progress that we made. There are a lot of new members on the council, so it felt like an important step to clarify what we are about and what we want to accomplish. During the day today, we came up with some reasonable goals to shoot for over the next three years and I think they will really help to motivate the council. Personally, I really enjoyed getting to know the individuals who make up the council. Many of the members have been personally touched by suicide and it was incredibly moving to hear their stories.

I also picked up a new favorite quote, from fellow member Pat Donelson, a pastor from Wasilla who's done some really neat outreach to kids in rural Alaska around suicide prevention:

"You can't teach what you don't know. You can't lead where you won't go."

Since we were in meetings all day, I didn't have a chance to go by the Big Brothers Big Sisters office. I feel bad about that. But I did get to see a few friends from the agency after hours and get caught up on how the agency is doing.

I related to my friends how I felt changed by this experience. These last few days has made me think that more and more. All through the meetings of the council, I wanted to ask questions about the research. I wanted to know what data we have about suicide's causes in Alaska and what we know about how to prevent it. I'm not sure how the rest of the council feels about using a data-driven approach though. I may be the only one who wants to move the group in that direction. I'm wondering how much I will find myself in similar situations in the future. Maybe I am becoming an evangelist for using evidence in decision making. I wonder if this will lead to future frustration for me or if I will find success in helping others consider bringing research into different decision making processes. It felt like a taste of what's to come for me, anyways.

On my last blog, I described this image of being lost in the water, treading amongst the separate islands of research, practice, and policy. Here's a crude drawing to that effect:

Identity

It's Tuesday and I'm on a plane to Seattle, on my way to Anchorage tonight. I'll be attending a meeting of the Alaska Suicide Prevention Council over the next two days, barring any further explosions from Mt Redoubt.

Next week, I'll be attending a meeting of all the fellows under the WT Grant Distinguished Fellows program in New York City. I have to give a 20 minute presentation to the rest of my colleagues about my fellowship experience. I've been puzzled by what to present to this group. Surely they won't be interested in the details of my fellowship experience. I'm tempted to talk about some of my recent soul-searching, but this might be a bore as well. I could always show some pictures. Shots of Alaska and the kids are always crowd-pleasers. But that would probably be a cop-out.

Thinking about this presentation has got me thinking more about my recent malaise. I'm snapping out of it, but what's remaining with me is a blurred sense of identity. I wish I could draw better, or I would like to draw a picture of my face all scrambled up. It would be one way to show how I'm feeling. Today in class it really struck me how I don't fit into this world of academics. Sure it's interesting and I am learning a lot of useful things. But all my other classmates are on tracks to get a degree. I don't feel like their peer, nor do I have a large urge to enroll in graduate school at this point. At the same time, now that I've been away from the job for three months or so, I'm not quite sure how I fit in there, either. It seems like I've changed somehow through this experience, and I'm not sure how my re-entry to the work-world will be.

The other image that comes to mind is a scene of three islands representing the worlds of Practice, Policy, and Research. I'm in the middle, treading water, wondering which island is inhabited by a friendly tribe and where I should try to come ashore. Meanwhile I'm getting caught up in a water polo match and constantly getting shoved underwater (I tried signing up for water polo this quarter. Two classes later and I couldn't shake my fear of drowning so I dropped the class).

I'm not trying to sound dramatic. I'm not losing a ton of sleep or anything like that. It's more like a general state of unease. It's probably confounded by the fact that I'm not quite sure what my job will be when I get back to Alaska. Right when I left, our organization was undergoing a restructuring and I wasn't really assigned a seat at that time. I thought it would be more fair for the agency to organize without me and see where I fit in when I got back. Now, my boss has announced her resignation, and I'm planning to apply for her spot as Executive Director. But who knows how that will turn out.

I've also started to wonder how it will feel to return to Juneau. I miss it more and more, but I've also gotten pretty accustomed to Portland's temperate weather. It's particularly nice to see the kids playing outside all the time. And I've gotten pretty used to the amenities of a more urban lifestyle. Surely Juneau is home, but will it feel like our permanent place once again? Who knows what the future holds.

Anyways, I'm starting to get into the groove of the new quarter. My two classes, statistics and relationship-based interventions for children seem really interesting. I'm excited to get more background in child development and to hone my statistics skills more.

Progress on my research projects has been slow. I was thrilled to launch an online survey I've been working on for weeks recently, though. We finally got IRB approval and were able to launch the survey last week. The survey is designed to provide some information from the field of youth mentoring to help inform my guidebook project. I'm working with David DuBois and Tom Keller to write this guidebook on evidence-based decision making in a youth mentoring context. Our hope is that the book will provide some useful tools to mentoring professionals to help make better decisions to guide program management. So far, we've gotten a good response from the field and I think we'll get some very useful information.

Some of my other projects have kind of gone to the back burner, but I am pretty excited about my newest one. I'm writing an article with the help of some researchers to try to compare the results of the recent random assignment studies on school-based mentoring. It's really helping me read the literature more closely. I'm particularly excited that we'll also be doing some meta-analysis of the results. I think it will be an eye-opening experience. We're going to try to publish the article when it's all finished.

I'm off the plane and here in my hotel now. Talking to the cab driver on the way into town made it feel like coming home. We'll see what it feels like when I go back to my temporary home in a few days.

Spring Break

It looks like I haven't posted here in a while. I guess I've been a slacker in lots of ways lately. Last week was Spring Break and the week before was finals week. I'm feeling guilty for taking the chance to goof off quite a bit, after finishing up my classes from last quarter. Here are some photos of highlights:

While Jessica and Celia enjoyed an alpine lesson at Timberline Lodge, Ferguson, Monique and I went nordic skiiing at Trillium Lake. Monique and Celia had lots of fun during Monique's visit. The fun of taking Monique to the airport on the MAX for her trip home made the parting a little less sad.



















After Monique went back to Chicago and her work as an acupuncturist and Chinese herbologist, the Wheeler-Parises took a trip through the Willamette Valley and across the Cascades. The children really liked all the animals. One our our first stops was for a family of goats. The highlight of Peterson's Rock Garden near Redmond were all of the peacocks that strutted around like they owned the place.




Next, we stopped at Silver Falls State Park. This is an amazing little park in the foothills of the Cascades. It has something like ten different waterfalls that flow over basalt cliffs, some of which you can actually walk behind. Here I am with Ferguson behind South Falls inside the park.






















We spent the next two nights in a rustic cabin on Suttle Lake, just over Santiam Pass on the other side of the Cascades. I really liked the ponderosa pine forests and we all enjoyed the dry sunny weather afforded by the Cascades' rain shadow. The middle photo above is Ferguson and Jessica walking to the headwaters of the Metolius River, near Sisters. This river suddenly erupts from the hillside in a cold water spring. On our second morning at Suttle Lake, we awoke to several inches of new snow. We took the hint and went tubing at Hoodoo Butte on our trip home. Celia really liked it but Ferguson preferred the warming hut to blasting down the mountain in an inner tube through the blowing snow.

Last but not least was the Enchanted Forest, Celia's favorite part of our trip. This little amusement park near Salem has lots of fairy tale scenes for the whole family to enjoy. Here is Celia with Miss Moffett.







***

So now it's back to school. The quarter started yesterday. I'll be taking two classes again, a second statistics course and an MSW class on relationship-based interventions with youth. It's good to get back to school. My time is now halfway over here. I feel like I really need to buckle down this quarter and make some good progress on the research projects I've started.

I'm also hoping that my recent existential funk will soon pass. I'm not sure where it came from, but I've spent a lot of time brooding on my future recently. Maybe I'm empthasizing with all of these college students too much. Maybe I'm reliving my own college days when I spent so much time wondering what I would do with the rest of my life. Or maybe this full immersion in an academic setting has got me confused about my role in society. I don't know, but I'm hoping that throwing myself back into school will allay some of this self-questioning. It's frankly just a bore to worry about the future. I much prefer distracting myself with the present.

Portland is beautiful this time of year. The cherry trees have all announced that spring is indeed here with their explosions of pink and white blossoms. And every time I see a forsythia I can't help but wonder if it was the burning bush that Moses saw.